Finished models 2017-VII–VIII

A Warhammer horse. It is made of plastic, instead of the white metal the other figures have been moulded in, but that made no difference to the Vallejo colours, they will come off the surface at the slightest provocation, no matter the primer used. I made a bit of a mess of the masking job as well, but there you go. The “1”s (one on each side of the shabraque) come from a dry transfer sheet I’ve had since time immemorial. The horse was light enough that there was no problem in attaching it to a transparent base with just a bit of super glue. (The original kit had two long runners that were supposed to slot into a base, but I prefer it this way.

The dryad got a nice wash and is getting closer to where I want to go. I added a bit of clear lacquer to give a sheen to the eyes and the oral cavity, but didn’t quite reach the effect I was going for. I shall continue to practice.

Albatross

As you may remember, I tried to convince The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain to cover Albatross, and while it seems they so far haven’t taken me up on it, Pražského ukulele bandu have:

E.T. (spoilers)

It turned out that neither Honeybuns nor I had actually seen E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial^*, so we decided to shell out a few crowns to YouTube and watch it. It was quite interesting.

One thing which I reacted to quite strongly was how obvious it was that several outdoor scenes were shot in an indoors studio. I presume the controlled environment weighed up for the loss of realism to the film-makers.

Another thing was how very 1980s everything was—as if the film makers had gone out of their way to insert period markers, but of course these were just things that happened to be around at the time.

But, and this is quite important, I got a very different impression of the central conflict of the film when compared to reviews and various references I’ve read, and that is that the mysterious Government Authorities in fact are kind and well-meaning. We find that they are quite happy to let Elliott initiate contact and communicate with E.T.—they have Elliott’s house bugged, to be sure, but they stay out of the way and just monitor what happens. Only when E.T. falls ill do they swoop in, and then in a desperate attempt to save E.T.’s life. All through this they are very respectful to E.T., Elliott, and his family.

The chase of the children by police cars is directly caused by two children (Elliott and Michael) stealing a van, driving away and by that endangering the lives of two technicians, who, as far as we can tell, do not at all threaten anyone, but are only interested in getting out of harm’s way, as they are being dragged behind the stolen van. Indeed, as ”Keys”, the leader of the operation, figures out where the children are headed (to reunite E.T. with its kin), it seems the police chase is called off, as there is no further perceived danger.

Further, the aliens are tacitly understood by all to not be a threat. In recent times it’s rather unusual to see a secret(?, we don’t really know, maybe they’re just not very publicly well-known) government agency portrayed so positively.

Then it is rather weird that they apply human-adapted medication to an alien, whose biochemistry they really don’t know anything about at all. It seems that even in a desperate situation it would be likely to cause more damage to do interventions the consequences of which are completely unknown, than just leaving things to their natural course. That E.T. seemingly dies after its bout with…hypothermia(?) and then comes to life again within minutes suggests that its physiology is, indeed, alien.

^* I was reminded of a class-mate in secondary school, who, based on the film title, decided that “terrestrial” meant “alien”. That “extra” bit must have been taken by him to mean simply “yet another”…

Finished models 2017-IV–VI

Some more Warhammer figures: A Wood Elf Wayfarer. I added a bowstring and an arrow, the arrow broke off in transport, though. The geometry isn’t very good for the bowstring either—the original mould maker apparently didn’t care a lot about that.

The two Wood Elves have these big round blobs on their hands. I’m not quite sure that they aren’t just some moulding artefact, but since they seem difficult to remove I’ve decided that they are their Rings of Power.

I once passed Berkeley Square

Alien Stockholm

A few years ago Stockholm City Museum showed the exhibition United Stockholms of America, pictures and stories from the eight Stockholms in USA, all very small towns and hamlets.

It now struck me that surely there must be at least one Stockholm in Canada, and so there is: Stockholm, the seat of government for Fertile Belt No. 183, which gives an immediate idea of the Canadian prairie, about as featureless and sparsely populated as a terraformed area on Tatooine.

Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing

So the bike lane comes up the hill on the left of the pedestrian path, but right here at the zebra crossing, it suddenly switches over to the right side. Presumably the people who did this did not for a second think it would make any difference whatsoever.

Everything is on YouTube

When I made my first visit to the US, this ad came on on the TV and again and again over the following days. The horrific scenario of pre-prepared junk food with soulless activity cards burnt “My Mom’s one busy lady” into my mind, enough for me to look for it on YouTube. What’s possibly worse is that I actually found it – in multiple versions. Other people must also have tried to exorcise the jitters by rewatching the scene.

Rare people

Watching British detective series it has often struck me that no matter in how seemingly remote a place a person has been killed, the body will typically be found within a few hours. An explanation for this might be suggested by Northumberland (where Vera is located) being the most sparsely populated county of England at 63 persons/km², which population density is in Sweden only surpassed by the three “big city” counties of Västra Götaland, Skåne, and Stockholm.

Scientific writing

As found in an article I’m reading: “These observations have indicated that X may provide an option for prophylaxis in certain populations.” Enough hedging for a fence around our house.

Finished model 2017-III

A Warhammer Wood Elf turned into a Moor Elf. Painted in Humbrol enamels for a change.

Finished model 2017-II

Originally a random Space Marine that came with a box set of Vallejo Model Color bottles I won in a raffle. While consisting of all of three pieces they didn’t have terribly good fit and required quite a bit of putty in awkward areas, yet had to be painted before attaching and puttying to be able to reach all surfaces.

In honour of the centenary of Finnish independence I decided on a colour scheme inspired by the Finnish national hockey team, even though they usually don’t carry heavy blasters and rocket packs. (Really, your knife will be sufficient for most eventualities.)

Lua

I got to thinking about the design of programming languages. It may be a recency effect, but it seems to me there’s been a plethora of programming languages designed and supported by a single person in the last decade or so. Usually their existence is very clearly due to some pet peeve of the designer, which is reflected in the grammar and feature set of the language. Some, like Ruby, have syntactical features which, while I find them annoying, presumably save the designer some typing in their typical idioms.

I presume that older languages have gone through processes of standardisation that have worn off the most idiosyncratic bits, if they weren’t designed by a committee to begin with. (Which does not mean that there aren’t disgusting bits in those languages too.)

The latest of these vanity languages I’ve run in to is Lua, which, on the whole, is not too bad. I still haven’t decided if I like the concept of metatables, but I have to admit it allows some nifty and powerful tricks.

So, how does it do the usual Hailstone program?

function hailstone(n)
   while (n > 1) do
      n = (n % 2 == 0) and n // 2 or n * 3 + 1
      print(n)
   end
end

I was a bit disappointed that assignment isn’t an expression and thus couldn’t be fed into the print(). Of note is also that Lua does not adhere to the C syntax patterns used by Java, JavaScript, awk, or even Perl, in particular the conditional assignment is done through short-circuiting logical expressions instead.

Veckans ord: pelargon

Det är klart att en stylit vill vara ensam för en stunds pelargon i solskenet.

Viikon sana: hummustuhnu

Huononlaatuisen falafelannoksen seuraus: hummustuhnu.

Finished model 2017-I

Something a bit unusual. A Relocatable Equipment Building in 1:76 scale from Scale Model Scenery’s kit. The material is cardboard and paper. I have to say the kit was of impressively high quality and the pieces making up a quite easy build. (I still managed in a moment of distraction to confuse the roof and floor, so had to tear them off and swap before the glue had set.)

I expect it will eventually find its place in some diorama context. In particular, it is my entry in the prestigious competition between me and Kipper, both of us known for never finishing our models, in who will get the most models finished during 2017.

Model donated by Big Mike.

Finished model 2016-III

Due to my travels in the UK, the OBS was long since aware of Warhammer when they became popular in his class and he eventually worked up a little collection of figures. When he moved to a student flat and clearly hadn’t touched them for a long time, I asked for them as practice subjects for painting. I’m now slowly working through them. Here’s a Wood Elf Lord I painted at the recent Hobby Fair.

Emotions with Björn Afzelius

I should have posted this five years ago, but I only first heard it a few days ago. Still worthy of listening to.

Beautiful betrayals

When the Iron Curtain fell, there were great hopes and expectations on both sides and one of the buzz phrases of the day was “joint venture”, so at the computer graphics conference I attended in St Petersburg in 1993, there was a hall dedicated to various proposed joint ventures between Russian and Western companies, hopeful Western computer manufacturers showing off their latest hardware to Russian customers who couldn't afford to buy any of it. The hall was, as such things are wont to be, pretty noisy, but suddenly something like a sonic blowtorch cut through the noise and on one of the screens I saw things you people wouldn’t believe, but then it ended and I realised I had just caught the last few seconds of a computer animation with music, but of what, I did not know.

A couple of years later I attended a computer graphics seminar at a conference hotel in Linköping. The speaker was fast-forwarding through a VHS tape and I glimpsed this same animation, but it was not part of the presentation. However, I asked for, and received!, permission to return to the room and go through the tapes on my own after dinner.

So, there I sat, late at night in a dark conference room in Linköping, watching and listening to the L’Opéra imaginaire version of « Dôme épais le jasmin » from Lakmé, tears streaming down my face.

As soon as I could I bought the full opera recording with Sutherland, Vanzo, Bacquier, and Berbié, conducted by Bonynge. I immediately brought it to the lab to share all this beauty with my coworkers. They were mostly amused by my excitement, but one person, composer of electro-acoustic music, rushed out of his room, screaming: “Of all the noise you make here, this was the worst!” and slammed the lab door closed, so as to keep the rest of the institute secure from the noise pollution.

I myself was pleased to find that apart from the Flower Duet there were several other songs that lingered in my ears. I was however a bit put off by the orchestra crescendo at the death of Lakmé, I felt a solemn fadeout would have been more respectful.

I noted that the plot, with a Western officer seducing and then abandoning an Asian woman, was quite similar to that of Madama Butterfly. Only much later did I find out that both operas may have been based on stories by Pierre Loti—the English Wikipedia entry for Madama Butterfly asserts that it is based on his novel Madame Chrysanthème, whereas the French entry denies this. (The Italian does not mention Loti at all.)

The Internet is for porn…

…and that’s why the biggest search engine is called Go ogle.